Navy veteran wins multiple lawsuits in case against CNN for defamation

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A court exhibit highlights a CNN chyron from a segment aired on Nov. 11, 2021, along with a picture of Zachary Young (via court documents).

The cable news network CNN suffered a steady stream of losses during a pretrial hearing in Florida on Thursday as a defamation case brought by a U.S. Navy veteran prepares to go to trial.

During the nearly three-hour proceeding, a key victory for plaintiff Zachary Young was presaged when the judge overseeing the matter brought up the infamous McDonald’s hot coffee case.

“You know how many trials I heard plaintiffs’ attorneys, or defense attorneys really, too, for that matter, back in the day; I haven’t heard this lately, though: ‘Everybody heard about the hot coffee McDonald’s lawsuit?”” 14th Judicial Circuit Court Judge William Henry said. “I mean, how many times during jury selection was that ever brought up?”

The judge went on to say that understanding and mentions of the hot coffee case often neglected the very concrete reasons McDonald’s was “tagged” as a defendant — but used the 1990s callback to illustrate a broader point about legal references.

“They would always ask those questions during jury selection,” Henry went on — again miming an attorney of days gone by. “‘Do you have any opinions about lawsuits and litigation just because McDonald’s got tagged for $6 million because some lady spilled hot coffee in her lap in the drive-thru? How does that make you feel about jury verdicts?’ or things of that nature.”

The decades-old tort lawsuit — which is formally stylized as Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants — assumed a level of esteem and infamy far beyond the legal community. The Liebeck lawsuit was referenced during a dispute over whether Young would be able to admit a series of related statements Jake Tapper made about journalistic ethics in the context of another high-profile defamation case.

Here’s how the judge rendered the statements in question:

If all you care about is clicks, the newsstand sales, and circulations, you don’t care about truth and facts, you wind up getting sued or settling with Dominion … there’s nothing wrong with wanting people to read your newspaper, wanting people to watch your show, but if that’s all you care about is that, and you don’t care about the responsibility — the grave responsibility — we have to be fair and honest, then you are a cancer on the democracy we have. Which is, I think what you see, when you have what we have.

Tapper’s comments were in reference to a case in which Fox News paid out $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems in order to settle a defamation lawsuit over pro-Donald Trump conspiracy theories and lies the network allegedly peddled about the 2020 election.

In the present case, the defendant network aimed to keep Tapper’s comments entirely out of the trial, arguing they were prejudicial.

“We don’t ask juries to decide cases based on their relevance to other cases or comparing them to other cases,” attorney David Axelrod said.

Young argued for, and won, a ruling allowing those comments, in slightly limited form, to reach the ears of eventual jurors.

In the full Tapper comments, made in 2024, CNN’s star anchor also mentions the headline-generating amount of money Fox agreed to pay in order to settle the potentially much-costlier Dominion lawsuit.

On Thursday, the court nixed that monetary reference but otherwise allowed Tapper’s comments to be introduced during trial.

“If there’s a way y’all can cut out the number, I would agree with that, otherwise I’m overruling the objection,” Henry said. “Delete the phrase ‘787 1/2 million.’”

In the present case, Young is suing CNN in Bay County, Florida, over a 2021 segment that aired on “The Lead with Jake Tapper.” Young claims the network falsely painted him as an “illegal profiteer” exploiting “desperate Afghans” with “exorbitant” extraction fees amid the fallout of President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Young, a U.S. citizen who lives in Austria and is the president of Florida-based corporation Nemex Enterprises, sued CNN for defamation per se, defamation by implication, group libel and trade libel, claiming that his efforts to save lives in Afghanistan as a security consultant were distorted by “lies published for sensationalism.”

The segment at issue, which aired on Nov. 11, 2021, and featured correspondent Alex Marquardt’s reporting on Jake Tapper’s show, displayed a photo of Young over chyrons that read: “AFGHANS TRYING TO FLEE TALIBAN FACE BLACK MARKETS, EXORBITANT FEES, NO GUARANTEE OF SAFETY OR SUCCESS” and “AFGHANS AND ACTIVISTS REPORT DEMANDS OF $10K-$14K FOR ATTEMPTS TO GET FAMILY MEMBERS OUT OF COUNTRY.”

The heart of the lawsuit is the argument that the phrase “black market” implied Young was engaged in something criminal, nefarious, or otherwise untoward and defamatory.

One bright spot for CNN on Thursday came when the judge refused to allow the admission of various pieces of evidence related to CNN pitches containing the phrase “black market.” Specifically, the judge refused to allow in a series of questions about what various deposed CNN figures thought the phrase “meant.” Somewhat colorfully, this resulted in the judge barring an answer that include references to “lemonade stands” and trading “Pokémon cards.”

To date, however, Young has racked up numerous pretrial victories.

Later on in the Thursday hearing, a different CNN lawyer essayed a different — but related — objection based on more procedural complaint.

Attorney Charles Tobin said Tapper’s commentary on journalistic ethics should not be used during the first phase of the trial because of how discovery played out so far. Tobin said the network understood a previous ruling to mean that Tapper’s words would only be used — if at all — during a potential second phase of the trial where damages might be assessed. On top of that, the attorney said, CNN understood that Tapper’s deposition would only concern the network’s finances.

The judge shrugged off the network’s objection by explaining that the first phase will also concern whether Young is entitled to punitive damages. This basic question, the court said, will necessarily be informed by Tapper’s statements about the world of journalism.

“This would be one of those things where, you know, if you’re not adhering to journalistic standards and you’re out there for clickbait — or for malice or for other things of that nature — I mean that’s relevant to an entitlement, potentially, to punitive damages,” Henry told Tolbin.

As CNN’s lawyer tried to say that allowing jurors to hear Tapper’s journalism comments would be “unfairly prejudicial,” the judge lightly cut him off. The court said demarcations over the nature of the anchor’s comments — and how they would be questioned — were limitations issued to reconcile a discovery dispute about the deposition. The trial itself, Henry reiterated, will deal with issues where various of Tapper’s comments are likely to be relevant.

To that end, the judge also allowed the plaintiff to introduce Tapper’s past comments about Trump — which were brought up during his deposition. Those comments include both direct criticisms of Trump as well as comments about how various political currents view and report on the 45th and 47th president.

“We learned in the campaign that Donald Trump can be cavalier about facts and truth,” Tapper said in 2017.

The anchor then went on to criticize the way that “conservative media” helped Trump repeat “falsehoods” as well “incendiary nonsense against President Trump from the left.”

CNN’s lawyer argued Tapper’s Trump-related comments might “make this a political case” about “whether CNN is a network that is criticizing President Trump and whether it is doing it in the proper way.”

“There’s no relevance to this statement and there’s incredible undue prejudice,” Axelrod argued at one point.

Axelrod went on to say the “Trump vs. CNN narrative” has nothing to do with the case. The network’s lawyer said the anchor’s comments might lead a pro-Trump juror to decide the case based on their “personal feelings” because they don’t like what Tapper said.

The judge was not convinced.

“Well, to borrow a phrase from another network, it seems like Mr. Tapper is being fair and balanced in his criticism of the media and his statements here,” Henry said before literally laughing off continued protests from CNN’s side.